After being selected in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Only the River Flows became an arthouse hit in China. Although a surprise at the time, it’s not difficult to see why—co-writer and director Wei Shujun’s neo-noir film is a throwback to the crime stories of the ’90s. Cinematographer Zhiyuan Chengma shoots on celluloid in low light, making the rural town setting appear in a grimy texture. There are scattered clues to the murder mystery, including a cassette tape containing hours of music with a voice message hidden on the B-side, as well as suspects that reveal a frightening loneliness to the river community.
But it’s Wei’s dark humor and atypical approach to narrative that differentiates his film from many in the genre. The director employs non-linear storytelling and shrugs his shoulders at any inclination of a clear resolution, making it apparent that he cares more about evoking a particular feeling than guiding viewers through a meticulously planned plot. For some, this can be an infuriating experience, with the film being too obscure to grasp onto, leaving behind a collection of stylistic and thematic ideas that—while interesting on their own—don’t completely fit together coherently. But this can be acknowledged while also appreciating Only the River Flows as a welcome departure from the norm, boldly challenging the reality of its cinematic world as well as the one its audience lives in.
The film follows Ma Zhe (Yilong Zhu), a police chief who leads the search following the killing of an older woman. A complicated mix of idealistic and cynical, Ma butts heads with his superiors who want a clean and quick case as he wades further into the depths of the investigation. Like many neo-noirs, Ma becomes obsessed, and his reality merges with the missing details of his work. He struggles to locate his police merit certificate until he begins to question if he ever earned one and—perhaps a little too on the nose—a jigsaw puzzle is finished despite him throwing a handful of pieces away. Initially, the prime suspect is a man who the murder victim occasionally took care of. The townspeople refer to him as “the madman” (Kang Chunlei), almost as if they are accusing him even before the killing occurred.
So the subtle question that Wei presents is why we point to “the madman” in the first place. Is it only because of his cognitive disability? Similarly, another suspect, a hairdresser (Wang Jianyu), confesses to the crime. Does he do this because he is aware his queerness means he’ll inevitably be set up? Wei’s interrogation becomes more pronounced when Ma and his pregnant wife, Bai Jie (Chloe Maayan), are told that their unborn child has a high chance of developing a mental disability. Just like the police chief’s murder case, there are no straightforward answers here.
Notably, Ma and his co-workers’ office space is set in an abandoned movie theater, linking the investigation to the idea of cinema. Perhaps Wei is suggesting that art forms like film act as an examination of a character’s secrets. Through film, we learn about faults and insecurities that coalesce into tragedies, and we become accustomed to the ways people build narratives for themselves to fill emotional holes in their lives. But more importantly, we may also gather that these rough-edged inconsistencies are what make us able to have empathy for one another and realize more about ourselves in the process.
Photo courtesy of KimStim
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